David Brooks can be amazingly funny in that sorta upper-crust Republican boarding school kinda way. At least on camera, he never appears to be trying to be funny, even when he is. I imagine in he's a huge cut-up in real life.
This column is classic Brooks. His description of Ward 3 and its denizens is spot on. "On any given Saturday, half the people in Ward Three are arranging panel discussions for the other half to participate in." One of the Kitten's predecessors lives up in that part of the city, so I used to see these folks all the time. As a matter of fact, I once ran into Tom Daschle in the neighborhood Starbucks one winter day, looking much older and shorter than I had imagined him. I cannot confirm whether he was chauffeured there, but with his down coat and little knit cap, he did look as if he had escaped from an old-folks home.
Ward 3 is a bucolic, almost suburban little patch of DC, with nice homes (in the $1M range--but which would run you about $250K if located in Raleigh, or Reno), lots of Lexus SUV's with Obama stickers, and, just around the corner, gigantic apartment buildings loaded with the young do-gooders who populate the federal government (now more than ever). I always thought that if a gun were held to my head and I had to live in DC (I know, I know, tall talk from a gelded UVA man now living in Maryland) ward 3 would be where I would live.
Here's why so many Dems live there....they get to claim to be DC residents, which in Demworld is very cool (heavily Democratic, urban hip, taxation without representation and all that), but you don't really live in the city. All of the pernicious facets of urban living...traffic, panhandlers, squeegee men, pushcart guys selling fake Rolex's, crime....these are confined to downtown. There in the rolling splendor of Ward 3, one can claim DC residence without actually having to consort with the underclass, except when they stop by to clean your house. Even better though, the largess of the Federal Government and its great effort to diversify its workforce has led to a super polyglot of ethnic and racial groups living there. So not only are residents insulated from the rigors of city life, but they get to do so in a veritable UN of diversity and tolerance--Valhalla for Liberals, as it were.
But don't scratch too deeply below the surface for diversity of thought. This is the land of $150k-$350K liberals, irrespective of their ethnicity. Unity of thought is valued here, and McCain Palin signs did not have long lives in front yards.
Reaganite's Sunday Funnies
6 hours ago
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4 comments:
"One of the Kitten's predecessors lives up in that part of the city,"
Did you ever date Republican women?
She was Republican.
Bryan: I'm not sure how I feel about David Brooks column, or your response. I guess as a career Federal employee (military and civilian), I was kind of turned off by the implict sneer or backhanded denigration of people like me. Bourgeois, middle class, do gooding bureaucrats who can't park their bikes straight. A George Corley Wallace mentality, without the crass racism. Maybe I misread him (and you) or took a light hearted piece too seriously. But we haven't done well by oursleves in denigrating "bureaucrats", most of whom honestly want to do the right thing. Neither have we done well by obeisance to the Masters of the Universe ( to whom we now deliver ukases on the sumptuary law a la Brooks). I guess I'll have to think about this more.....
Mark
Mark--great post, and a wonderful Wilsonian defense of the able bureaucrat.
Couple of things.
1. Brooks makes a living out of defining subgroups of humans in a light-hearted sort of parody-laced way (see "Bobos in Paradise, his book length version of this genre on Bourgeois Bohemians....). This is his thing, so to speak. And I think he does it with humor.
2. I don't think Brooks is taking a swipe at hard-working, able bureaucrats. He's taking a swipe at hard-working, able bureaucrats who live in Ward 3, and this is a distinction worth making. It is their INSULARITY from the causes they so loudly espouse (and the concomitant hypocrisy) that sets them apart. It is their drinking of each other's bath water and real lack of any intellectual diveristy that is worth lampooning.
3. Ward 3 is the home of Democrats who think education vouchers are a threat to the public education system in the country, and they'll tell you that after dropping their little prodigies off at the National Presbyterian School. Ward 3 is the home of Democrats who wish to see taxes raised, while assessing none on their domestic help. Ward 3 is ground zero for the kind of insidious, liberal pheromones that bathe the collective federal brains (did you happen to hear the girlish cheer that greeted the swearing in of Eric Holder at Justice? At last, one of US!).
Brooks got it right. I don't think he was trying to eviscerate public service....just hypocrisy.
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